Rune-based ID

[Pete Mack]

Um. I don't care about the first few levels of the game. They exist to learn the mechanics of the game, and to make it expensive to get home from more interesting levels without recall.

Finally: That speed occurs sometimes at DL 1 is the only useful thing about the level. Nerfing it makes it even more useless a level. That other potions occur there is actually strategically valuable, since you know you can test potions at CL 1 safely, while that is not the case at CL 20. Yeah the potion itself has no value at the time. So what? Simply discovering it safely has value.

[TJS]

I think the idea is that you replace the weaker version with the greater version. The main goal here would be to introduce more tactical decisions in the early game. (we could also look at expanding from the slot based inventory, but that's a harder change that requires more though.) I also would very strongly argue against stuff like the bless, holy chant, prayer progression.

For example, the fact that there's a progression from CLW to CSW to CCW isn't too bothersome because you won't ever get a CLW drop past level 20 or so. The same would be true for minor speed.

To put it another way, the early game is precisely the only time where you're likely to be carrying around junk because you have the slots for it. So if we could make some of that junk tactically interesting, then we probably should.

Why is speed not tactically interesting in the early game?

I too vote against even more junky items in the game.

[Nomad]

This discussion is probably going a bit sideways from the purpose of this thread by this point, but once we've got the ID system sorted, I feel like it might be good to create some sort of big "What do YOU class as junk?" thread (or possibly one for each type of consumable?) where everybody lists which items they never pick up/immediately squelch vs. which ones they actually find useful, and see if there's any sort of consensus on what needs to go or be changed.

[TJS]

This discussion is probably going a bit sideways from the purpose of this thread by this point, but once we've got the ID system sorted, I feel like it might be good to create some sort of big "What do YOU class as junk?" thread (or possibly one for each type of consumable?) where everybody lists which items they never pick up/immediately squelch vs. which ones they actually find useful, and see if there's any sort of consensus on what needs to go or be changed.

You've got a point, but the ID system is currently being designed around all the junk being so tedious to sort through eg. Consumables id on use, adding scrolls to learn random runes etc.

[Nick]

New builds up - Windows and OS X.

Changes are:

• Starting characters have money again
• Slime molds (and related things) don't get a ??
• Rings of Flames, Digging, etc ID properly
• Basic lights and diggers no longer have a magical digging bonus - instead their light and digging abiity is innate. This makes them ID more sensibly, and (for example) a Torch of Brightness will have a +1 to Light, for a total light radius of 2.

I haven't done Nomad's suggested improvements to messages yet, but I plan to; I also haven't changed ID to consumables at all, and I don't plan to for now.

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

[Nomad]

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

Random powers on all *Slays* sounds like a good idea - it makes the lower end slays like *Slay Orc* more interesting to find and more potentially useful, plus gives you more chances to encounter different runes.

[Therem Harth]

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

Yes please to the latter.

For the record, I'm completely in favor of ego items getting more random perks. Makes the game more interesting IMO.

[Estie]

Could go all the way and randomize egos completely.
I´d suggest to keep the names and spirit of the egos, but give them a randomly determined set of proprties from a pool of suitable ones.

For example, take of Westernesse:

currently, they give +1-2 str, dex, con; FA, SI, slay orc, troll, giant (did I forget anything?). Thats 8 runes; now add a few more thematic ones; say: slay undead, rconf, +lightradius, and at the start of each game, determine the properties of "westernesse" like a flavour by picking 8 runes at random from that pool.

This is just a rough sketch, if wanted I can go through the egos and do a better job.

And while were at it: group the egos in pre- and suffixes ala Diablo. Its a great system, with a given item getting something like a 70% chance for a suffix and 30% chance for a prefix; ToME2 has done it, and with luck, you can find a fiery longsword of extra attacks or blessed mace (defender).

[Pete Mack]

ToMeE two is balanced for "leveled Orcs" and the like, to the extent it's balanced at all. Making "super-ego" weapons is a good way to unbalance angband: Adding brands is already known to unbalance it (as was discovered with branding rings.) start conservatively by messing with *slay* weapons. Those are weak enough that they can't really be unbalanced. Westernesse and +attacks are already pretty powerful.

[Nomad]

ToMeE two is balanced for "leveled Orcs" and the like, to the extent it's balanced at all. Making "super-ego" weapons is a good way to unbalance angband: Adding brands is already known to unbalance it (as was discovered with branding rings.) start conservatively by messing with *slay* weapons. Those are weak enough that they can't really be unbalanced. Westernesse and +attacks are already pretty powerful.

Agreed. Also, while I'm definitely in favour of more randomness and a wider range of egos, I think having too much possible variation under a single ego name just reintroduces the issue of having to inspect everything to check its properties. V4 had an affix system where ego items could be generated with a wide range of random properties, and finding a way to give them sensible names that conveyed enough information to the player was a big issue with that.

I think if we did move to a suffix/prefix system for egos in V, then rather than combining the existing egos into super-egos, it should probably be done by breaking them down into smaller blocks of runes that can then be mixed and matched. For instance, you could split the current Westernesse properties into multiple separate egos, so that say the three slays (Orc/Troll/Giant) are a suffix called "Westernesse", the stat boosts (Str/Dex/Con) are a separate prefix called, um, "Mighty"?, and the FA/SeeInv properties are a parenthetical suffix called... something else. That way to generate the existing Westernesse you'd have to roll an object that has all three together, but you could also get egos that have only one or two of them, or where they're mixed and matched with different properties. (But even so, as Pete points out, some thing like brands and extra attacks are just too powerful to combine with anything else, so you'd probably need some sort of power rating system like with randarts to restrict how good a combination you can get on a single item.)

I do think rune-based ID (and the potential for rune-based squelch) does open a lot of opportunities for making egos more interesting and variable, but the more measured approach is probably to experiment with randomising a single element of existing egos, or creating a few new equivalent egos with random elements (say, an armour type with two base resists and a random higher resist, or a cloak that gives one random protection). Slay and brand levels could also maybe be randomised a bit, so instead of a fixed x3 or x5 you might get x2 brands or x4 slays in the mix as well.

[Estie]

Ya the first thing to do when thinking creatively about game design is to throw out of the window any balance considerations. Each and every idea posted here is met by "but balance!". Rip it out, like the pages of the school book in dead poets society.

Balance has to be considered AFTER decisions about game mechanics are made, not thrown in the path of same.
Not all ideas turn out good, but never is balance the reason why they dont.

As for the case at hand, I had given it consideration and come up with a simple change to downpower ego items: namely to reduce the dice of great weapons. Other ways can be conceived, but the order is to first like or dislike the idea; if wanted, to establish balance, if not, to move on.

[Pete Mack]

Bleah. The great weapons are the only ones that are worth keeping as ego items in the endgame. Nerf their dice and HA/+attacks(+2) become just one more boring find. For them to work, they *have* to be able to do artifact level damage to the final bosses. If you are going to do this, nerfing the extremes is the wrong way to go. That's what happened to Crown of Might(+3), which almost never happens anymore. An earlier poster mentioned power rankings for modified ego weapons. That is the right way to go. Don't nerf existing extremes; enforce them on new types.

[Derakon]

Bleah. The great weapons are the only ones that are worth keeping as ego items in the endgame. Nerf their dice and HA/+attacks(+2) become just one more boring find. For them to work, they *have* to be able to do artifact level damage to the final bosses. If you are going to do this, nerfing the extremes is the wrong way to go. That's what happened to Crown of Might(+3), which almost never happens anymore. An earlier poster mentioned power rankings for modified ego weapons. That is the right way to go. Don't nerf existing extremes; enforce them on new types.

There's more than just the endgame, you know. A lot of this discussion seems to assume that all of the levels prior to around 1500' "don't count" and anything that's important in those areas ought to be ignored.

[Estie]

Bleah. The great weapons are the only ones that are worth keeping as ego items in the endgame. Nerf their dice and HA/+attacks(+2) become just one more boring find. For them to work, they *have* to be able to do artifact level damage to the final bosses. If you are going to do this, nerfing the extremes is the wrong way to go. That's what happened to Crown of Might(+3), which almost never happens anymore. An earlier poster mentioned power rankings for modified ego weapons. That is the right way to go. Don't nerf existing extremes; enforce them on new types.

Err yes, they will be fine as acidic MoD of extra attacks (+2) (4d8) (+15, +15). While that still outperforms Ringil, at least its harder to get than a simple MoD +2 attacks.
Wasnt your complaint that double egos would overperform ?

Anyway, I agree completely with your point about nerfing the extremes. The thing is, crowns of might used to be rare. There have been changes that made the rare egos much more common at depth. With the current frequency, finding a +3 crown would be trivial if the chance for any crown to be +3 were 1/3. So while I dislike mixed pval crowns, going back to same pval without other changes doesnt seem right, either.

But one reason I love the diablo affix system is that it creates extremes.

Anyway, Nomad made the suggestion to chunk down the big egos before doubling them; this sounds good to me, too.

[Pete Mack]

That's great against Sauron, but it is
* vastly more rare than an ordinary +2 attacks weapon (0.3*1/5 = 6% as common)
* still not as good against M, who is much harder to kill anyway.
* vastly overpowered against acid vulnerable creatures. It's one thing to slaughter undead with 1000dam/turn. It's another to slaughter a large fraction of everything in the dungeon. Nite that this holds for ALL brands, not just Acid...and since the thing is already deadly against undead, cold and poison brands don't have their usual holes.

And yes, i understand there is more to the endgame than killing Morgoth (despite the classical advice on how to win the game.) But figuring out how to balance the game in part starts with endgame weapons and works backwards. So find out what the power is at various levels, and find ways to reach it.

Finally, remember the problem with "all brands and slays" artifacts that are still not as good as something more basic with bigger dice. If you make ego weapons overpowered then rebalance them b ly nerfing the base weapon, you end up with a "jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome.

I have NO PROBLEM with enhanced ego items as a concept. But they need to be balanced the way artifacts are (mostly) balanced. We already learned that lesson once.